a cheery spirit difficult to abash, and by the coming of spring knew all
of the best-looking girl students in the place--knew them well enough,
it appeared, to speak of them not merely by their first names but by
abbreviations of these. He had become fashion's sprig, a "fusser" and
butterfly, and he reproached his roommate for shunning the ladies.

"Well, the truth is, Fred," said Ramsey one day, responding
darkly;--"well, you see the truth is, Fred, I've had a--a--I've had an
experience--"

So, only, did he refer to Milla.

Fred said no more; and it was comprehended between them that the past
need never be definitely referred to again, but that it stood between
Ramsey and any entertainment to be obtained of the gentler but less
trustworthy sex. And when other Brethren of the "frat" would have
pressed Ramsey to join them in various frivolous enterprises concerning
"co-eds," or to be shared by "co-eds," Fred thought it better to explain
to them privately (all being sacred among Brethren) how Ramsey's life,
so far as Girls went, had been toyed with by one now a Married Woman.

This created a great deal of respect for Ramsey. It became understood
everywhere that he was a woman-hater.

Chapter XIV

That early spring of 1915 the two boys and their friends and Brethren
talked more of the war than they had in the autumn, though the subject
was not an all at absorbing one; for the trenches in Flanders and France
were still of the immense, remote distance. By no stretch of imagination
could these wet trenches be thought greatly to concern the "frat," the
Lumen, or the university. Really important matters were the doings of
the "Track Team," now training in the "Gym" and on the 'Varsity Field,
and, more vital still, the prospects of the Nine. But in May there came
a shock which changed things for a time.

The _Lusitania_ brought to every American a revelation of what had lain
so deep in his own heart that often he had not realized it was there.
When the Germans hid in the sea and sent down the great merchant ship,
with American babies and their mothers, and gallantly dying American
gentlemen, there came a change even to girls and boys and professors,
until then so preoccupied with their own little aloof world thousands of
miles from the murder.

Fred Mitchell, ever volatile and generous, was one of those who went
quite wild. No orator, he nevertheless made a frantic speech at the
week's "frat meetings," cursing